176 The Bible of Nature 



Just as in the individual body we recognize the 

 cooperation of organs as well as the struggle of 

 parts, so in the great world of organisms we must 

 recognize not only competition but cooperation, 

 not only struggle but mutual aid, if we would draw 

 any sane conclusion as to the ethical import of the 

 great drama. As against Huxley's conclusion 

 that the course of organic evolution — through 

 "a materialized logical process" — has no ethical 

 suggestion except that man must try to go on the 

 opposite tack, it is interesting to place Geddes' 

 conclusion that *' Nature is a materialized ethical 

 process," meaning by this mainly that some of the 

 greatest steps in organic progress are interpretable 

 as subordinations of the nutritive and self-regarding 

 to the reproductive and species-regarding activities. 



We must, of course, be careful not to pass from 

 one anthropomorphism to another. We must be 

 careful not to read the man into the beast, still less 

 into the plant. Many animals exhibit self-sacri- 

 fice in the sense that they exert themselves often 

 to their own detriment on behalf of their young, 

 but this is not done out of a sense of duty any more 



"Will to Rule," should have — most impudently, of course 

 — described Darwin as "one of those mediocre English- 

 men who have coarsened the mind of Europe," "an intel- 

 lectual plebeian, like all his nation," and should have called 

 the struggle for existence "an incredibly one-sided doc- 

 trine," as a description of the normal aspect of life in 

 nature. 



